AuthorTopic: 'Grubbing Up' a texture? (Read 2830 times)

--Pictoral explanation below.--Hey, everyone. I'm wondering if there is something I can do to, as I'd say, 'grub up' a texture, and make it look dirty... Without having to do a ton of texture mapping. I'm essentially trying to apply a transmap-ish texture on top of a standard, single-color texture. I do know about... transmaps and stuff, but I wanna get it done without having to mess around with having multiple objects that are essentially the same. Ya feel me?If there's no way to do it, I guess texturing is the only way out.

If it was possible in Anim8or to apply a textured transparency to a material, over it's ambient/diffuse colour, you'd still have to texture map it to avoid stretching or tiling patterns. This being the case, your best option is to use a bitmap editor (eg. Photoshop) to combine the dirt with the base colour, and then create a series of maps from this image for application in the specular and bump channels to give the dirt dimension and make it less shiny than the base colour, and finally use a UV mapper package to apply it to the object. You'll hit problems if using the ART attributes however, such as attempting to replicate chrome with rusty areas, as the attributes are not affected by maps. In this instance the best option, in my opinion, is using multiple objects. Although I do most of my rendering outside of Anim8or, in part because of the limited scope of its material definition, I would be very interested if anybody else has found a better solution to this problem in Anim8or.

Wow, Ensoniq, very comprehensive description, being as helpful as it is (which is to say there's not a lot to be done here). I guess for the most part, I was counting on texture mapping anyway to achieve the second layer grime and rust effects. My main point of wanting to do this was to no have to do anything as far as a base coating, but I guess there wasn't much avoiding it in the long run. Plus, I get a little more texture mapping experience!

(EDIT) So I have my UV Map open in a mapping program. However, it doesn't seem to execute the splitting of objects, so what would I do to kinda separate the objects? I rather not have to do them all in separate UV maps, as this model has quite a few objects, but I guess I'm willing to do what ever it takes.

I use LithUnwrap (free download) which does have the ability to separate an object into groups on the map. Having said that, depending on the model it may be better in some cases to individually map certain parts rather than attempting to spread them all across a single huge map, particularly where you want high resolution textures. I am currently building a large spaceship that is a collection of modules, much like the International Space Station, and in this instance it makes sense to UV map each module individually. In certain cases you can apply a single map to a grouped object without separating, such as a group with a single main object and a number of smaller 'surface detail' objects, where overlapping faces are not a big concern, but you'll really need to experiment with this as every model is different.